Academic

Global Free Speech Update

By firstamendmentblogger

Venezuela: Regulators continue to investigate Globovision for inciting a "panic and anxiety" in reports that criticized the government's emergency response record.  Two years ago, regulators pulled the license of a Radio Caracas Television, leaving Globovision the only remaining anti-Chavez station on the public airwaves.

Netherlands: With elections to the European Parliament coming up next week, Dutch politician Geert Wilders' Freedom Party is gaining in the polls.  In 2008, the release of Wilders' radically anti-Islamic film Fitna set off an international controversy, and has since led to charges of incitement being filed in Amsterdam and Jordan.  In February, the UK banned him from entering the country. 

Africa: All Africa.com posts a  summary of Amnesty International's regional report on human rights in Africa.  Read it and weep. 

Belarus: Amnesty cites continued concern over detentions and the use of force against demonstrators, the harassment of journalists, and restrictions on a free media.

United States: The ACLU is calling for an end to "ideological exclusions" that bar foreign scholars from entering or remaining in the US without adequate cause.  Lawyers for the organization appeared in court this week in the case of South African scholar Adam Habib whose visa application was denied on account of unspecified national security concerns.  The Habib case is part of a larger pattern of ideological exclusions undertaken against outspoken critic of US foreign policy and the war in Iraq.  A coalition of free speech advocates expressed concern in a letter delivered to the government in March.

Europe:  A study by the Center for Intellectual Property and Information Law found that copyright laws adversely affect access to digital material by beneficiaries (libraries, educators and the like) normally excepted from copyright restrictions.  The report calls for a revision of Article 6(4) of the Information Society Directive.

-Kathleen Bergin

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 29, 2009 (boomark / email).